America's bizarre, dangerous winter showcased the extreme weather climate scientists have been warning us about

In California, dirt that had dried to a fine dust after years of drought now feels wet and Earthy underfoot. A barrage of rainstorms have caused the state's lakes and reservoirs, once dangerously low, to rise enough to threaten dams and surrounding communities.

It's been a very weird winter in the US. So much so, in fact, that it's easy to lose track of all the bizarre, historic stuff going on.

So here's a list.

At weather stations across the US, record-breaking warm temperatures defined February. In total, 11,743 daily records were set due to the winter month's strange heat.

Source: NOAA

1,151 of those daily temperature records were also monthly records, which means that they didn't just break the record for the day they happened, but for the whole month of February.

Source: NOAA

Compared to normal winter temperatures this February, nearly 70% of the US was deemed "very warm" — that is, in the top 10% of all time temperatures — according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Source: NOAA

That lead to a dangerously early spring across much of the country, with plants budding weeks earlier than normal. That put crops at risk of losing their early blooms to late cold snaps and storms.

Source:

It's also been a deadly year so far for tornadoes, with 23 deaths attributed to funnel clouds so far. There were 20 deaths in January alone, the most ever for the month.

In all of 2016, just 17 people died as a result of tornadoes.

Source: Weather.com

Across the country, there have been 299 preliminary reports of tornadoes, more than double the average by this time of year.

The outbreak is partially due to persistent warmth in the Gulf of Mexico, which feeds energy into thunderstorms across the South. In records dating back to 1891, this is the first year the Gulf has not dropped below 73 degrees.

Sources: Weather.com, Ars Technica

Further north, another streak has ended: For the first time in the 146-year record, Chicago went the entirety of January and February without an inch of snow on the ground.

If you've ever spent a winter in the Windy City, you know how strange that is.

Source: National Weather Service

When this winter's latest snow-free stretch did end, a rare mid-March blizzard painted a region from the Midwest to the East Coast white.

Snowstorm Stella dumped two feet of snow in places in Pennsylvania and New York state, triggering avalanches, and breaking the all-time 24-hour accumulation record in Binghamton, New York.

Its worst effects, however, dodged the East Coast's biggest cities.

Sources: Accuweather, Auburnpub.com

In California, a wet winter brought abrupt changes to the state after years of drought. But the powerful storms, which set rainfall records across the state, caused flooding and infrastructure damage.

Source: CNBC

Outside the US, other major records were set. One of the most significant is the ongoing decline in Arctic sea ice, which remained far below previous record lows for most of December, January, and February.

This graph shows the Arctic sea ice extent as of March 5, 2017, along with daily ice extent data for four previous years. The 1981 to 2010 median is in dark gray, with the gray areas around the median line show the interquartile and interdecile ranges of the data.

As the chart demonstrates, Arctic sea ice levels were lower this year than any before until recently. (Antarctica also set record lows.)

Source: National Snow and Ice Data Center

At the same time, eons-old permafrost continued to melt around the world, with a recent study finding 52,000 square miles of Canadian permafrost are threatened.

If all of that melts, the result would be a massive release of frost-bound carbon dioxide.

As meteorologist and science writer Eric Holthaus explains, none of this is normal — and if this winter weather doesn't seem out of the ordinary to you, that's probably because extreme weather has gradually become more common in recent years.

But unpredictable, severe weather like this is exactly what scientists have been suggesting the world will experience because of climate change. On the East Coast, for example, two recent studies suggested that climate change would make blizzards more common. (That's why the term "global warming" is a poor descriptor for climate change — as the world heats up, the most important shifts are toward extremes in all directions.)

So as nice as it might feel to put on shorts in February, it's worth remembering that enjoyable weather abnormalities come hand-in-hand with others that are a lot more scary.

America's bizarre, dangerous winter showcased the extreme weather climate scientists have been warning us about

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